Indiana congressman Mark Souder’s resignation, announced Tuesday, came after anonymous tipsters called his aides and his opponents in a Republican primary to say he was having an extramarital affair with a part-time staffer, according to sources familiar with the calls.

The conservative Christian congressman’s chief of staff, Renee Howell, confronted him last week over the rumored affair with Tracy Meadows Jackson, according to a source in the office. …

The affair began after Jackson was hired in 2004, according to the source in the office. Jackson, who is married, was to be a guest host with Souder for a daily radio spot he recorded for WFCV, a Christian radio station in Fort Wayne, Ind.

I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff.

In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain. …

The ideas we advocate are still just and right.

America will survive and thrive when anchored in those values.

Human beings, like me, will fail, but our cause is greater than individuals.

It is based upon eternal truths.

Gee, I dunno … a sitting Congressman who advocates forcing Puritanical behavior on American adolescents, having an extramarital affair and thus engaging in incredibly hypocritical — and therefore thoroughly non-Christian — behavior, while at the same time claiming to be a warrior in a “right” and “holy” cause which is inarguably and incontrovertibly true, for all eternity … doesn’t seem like some tiny little thing that’s being “twisted for political gain.” It seems, instead, like a very serious personal moral collapse! It also suggests that, perhaps, these “eternal truths” somehow aren’t quite “true” enough to get people who claim to hold them, to actually obey them.